"It’s weird that people in the room don’t remember Trump using that word when Trump himself was calling friends to brag about it afterwards," Erick Erickson, who has in the past been critical of Trump, said in a tweet.

"I spoke to one of those friends. The President thought it would play well with the base."

It’s weird that people in the room don’t remember Trump using that word when Trump himself was calling friends to brag about it afterwards. I spoke to one of those friends. The President thought it would play well with the base.

Citing a person who spoke with the president, The Associated Press reported that Trump doubled down on his reported comments from this week, defending the remark as not racist but a “straightforward assessment” of the living conditions in the countries discussed.